Core Impact Sets Outs Its Table On Leadership And A Positive Business Culture
Speaking at a bi-monthly meeting of Down Business Connect in Denvir’s Hotel yesterday morning (23rd January 2024), Sean Grant, a business coach with Core Impact, said leadership was a key for a positive business culture to develop and succeed writes Jim Masson.
Addressing the early morning business referral group, Sean said that “the work that Core Impact does today derives from its own earlier experience in initially working in a toxic culture, something that many business experience.
“At 22 years of age and acting as an assistant manager, I was passionate about my role in the company.
“I soon realised that I was working with a lot of people, some young, and that I had to keep learning from the experiences. At that time our own business culture was poor and it proved to be a useful platform to grow from.
“I was dealing with all sorts of situations, some difficult, with workers and at that stage and performance was quite low. There were even issues with drugs.
“But out of this difficult mix, I learned to engage, enable and empower. Those were the key stepping stones to a healthier business culture.
“I worked with a number of organisations to change the culture and address our core values and skills. Fundamental to this is emotional intelligence.
“I was open and transparent with my team, and even with myself. I have seen workers run themselves into the ground as they avoided the key issues and this just usually ended up as a set of HR problems.
“So I looked closely at this culture and the young people in the business responded to this well.”
Sean said that culture was basically the values that contribute to the psychological behaviours in an organisation. He added that good empathetic leadership can help improve the culture and eventually the performance of the workers and the business.
He described the culture as visible ie of artefacts, behaviours and metrics, whereas the invisible culture includes beliefs, values and assumptions.
“Properly structured leadership therefore helps promote good culture and improves performance. But I recognised that I was always going to have significant challenges. It is quite a dynamic process and you need to be fully engaged from the start.
“That means as a manager you are sharing the vision and values of the company, and when you engage with the workers you make them each feel valued and that they are making or can make a positive contribution to the company and to themselves.
“Importantly, there is a huge business cost in not listening to the workers.
“So the next key stage in good leadership is enabling.
You need to prepare to fail and you sometimes will do, but this is part of the learning experience for you as a leader. This helps to drive innovation.
“Then you need to communicate that you are committed to development – your own development as a manager and that of each of the workers. To this end you need to provide the various tools that the staff. ie what they need to develop and grow within the company eg training.
“Then you have to empower the workers. That involves recognising their contributions and efforts, and rewarding them for their contribution to the business.
“If workers experience intrinsic motivation through feeling loved and respected in the workplace, and they are self-driven to deliver on their role, and receive positive feedback from their superiors, them the culture will improve.
“Leaders in the workplace need to be trusted. They need to be able to deal with issues of, for example, of confidentiality and other personal issues such as mental health, general health, personal circumstances etc.
“So, the manager in providing active leadership needs to act as a mentor and provide support to the worker when needed. It is a continuous, never-ending process.
“So these basic principles are what Core Impact has put into practice in its own company and encourages others to address to improve the overall culture in the business.
“We find that most people do care about their work culture and will work with you on this.
“Then leadership also impacts on people’s lives, it has a ripple effect, and can reach out projecting into family circles and other social groups.”
Member of Down Business Connect then asked Sean a few questions over tea and coffee and breakfast bacon butties.
And the meeting concluded at 8.30am.
***
If you are interested in joining Down Business Connect, please contact: Brendan Kearney on: 07989335041.
, Sean Grant, a business){kind=link}